Saturday, 11 July 2009

Confirmed: swine flu infect pig, pig to pig

That is why it is called Swine Flu. It originated from Pigs, it surelywill return from pig.

It may have 1/3 of pig virus, but pigs can also catch bird flu aswell, just as humans can, but only pigs can produce flu, which allowshuman-human transmission. Birds can't.

The fear had been that bird flu will infect pigs, and pigs produceversions that allow human-human transmissible bird-flu. Note that thename does not change despite it being DEVELOPED in pigs.

In fact you can say that all flu are SWINE FLU, because only pigsallow mutations into human-human transmissible form from otheranimals, whether bats, (nipah and encephalitis) or birds, as thecurrent swine flu is. Fortunately Swine flu is only 1/3 bird flu.

OTTAWA — German scientists are warning of a pig pandemic after testssuggested the swine flu can pass from humans to hogs and then infect awhole herd.

A team of virologists at Germany's national animal health research labrecently infected five pigs with the human strain of the H1N1 virusand put the sick pigs in a room with three healthy pigs.

Within four days, all the pigs had the flu. All of them recovered.

A research paper to be published Friday in the Journal of GeneralVirology warns "the high transmissibility of the virus observed inhumans also applies to pigs."

That increasingly puts pigs at risk as the virus spreads among humans.

"It must be assumed that this virus will spread fast and efficientlyif introduced into swine farms, possibly establishing endemicinfections," the paper says.

"With the increasing numbers of human infections, a spillover of thisvirus to pigs is becoming more likely."

There is no evidence pigs are passing the swine flu virus to humans,or that eating pork products poses an infection risk.

Dr. Thomas Vahlenkamp, who headed the team of virologists at Germany'sFriedrich Loeffler Institute, said the tests show how susceptible pigsare to the virus.

"We would not claim that the virus can easily be transmitted to pigs,"he said.

"But at least if the pig is infected, it can transmit it quite easilybetween pigs."

The Canadian Pork Council says fears of a pig pandemic are overblownsince the animals are kept away from people.

"It's not like ... some of the other animals or livestock that arejust out in a field," spokesman Gary Stordy said.

"Since they are in enclosed structures with ventilation, there's veryminimal contact with unauthorized (people) or the general public.There's generally very limited access to a farm just because of bio-security measures."

This is not the first time researchers have shown pigs can catch thehuman strain of the H1N1 virus. British scientists ran similar testsin May with the same results.

But it's believed the German scientists are the first to publish theirfindings in a scientific journal.

The Germans also added a twist to their experiment by throwing fivechickens into the mix to see if the birds would catch the virus fromthe sick pigs. But the fowls stayed fit.

Researchers then tried to directly infect the chickens with the virus,to no avail.

"We don't know whether chicken in general cannot catch the infection,but at least in our hands with this isolate from a German patient wecould not infect chicken," Vahlenkamp said in an email.

Canada is only one of two places where the pandemic virus has beenfound in pigs. The other is Argentina.

In April, swine flu appeared in pigs on an Alberta farm. At first,health officials thought a farmhand who had been to Mexico and fellill upon his return infected the pigs. But blood tests showed theworker didn't infect the herd.

The farmer who owned the pigs later culled his entire herd when hecouldn't sell the animals.

Two workers at a Saskatchewan hog farm recently caught a brand newvirus, and a third is thought to have been sickened by the same thing.All three have fully recovered.

Health officials say the new virus is not connected to the currentswine flu pandemic that has infected thousands of Canadians and beenlinked to 37 deaths across the country.

The 10,000 to 15,000 hogs on the Saskatchewan farm are all reportedlyhealthy.

That's sure to have drawn a sigh of relief from the farm owner sinceit's common to see influenza in pigs, and human transmission to pigsis known to occur.

The German scientists say experiments are underway to see whetherthere are any vaccines available for pigs that might stop the spreadof the swine flu.